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Educational Expansion and Inequality in Indonesia: Testing the Kuznets Hypothesis with Provincial Panel Data
Get PDFThis study analyzes the relationship between the level of educational attainment, educational inequality and expenditure inequality in Indonesia based on a provincial panel data set from 1996-2011 and attempts to test the Kuznets hypothesis for educational expansion. We found that educational inequality decreases as the average level of educational attainment increases. In contrast, expenditure inequality follows an inverted U-shaped pattern with respect to educational expansion and reaches the maximum at around 9-10 years of education. Given the current average educational level, further educational expansion would increase expenditure inequality. However, more equal distribution of education has an equalizing effect.departmental bulletin pape
Six or four seasons ? Perceptions of climatic changes and people's cooperative attitudes toward ood protection in Bangladesh
Get PDFBangladesh is vulnerable to climatic changes, and there has been a serious debate about the occurrence and the relationship of a change in climate to the frequency of ooding. For example, areas of Dhaka are hypothesized to possess four seasons rather than the six seasons that have traditionally comprised the annual calendar. Despite the importance of this topic, it has received little research attention. Thus, we examine (i) whether a change in climatic patterns is occurring, and (ii) the perceptions and attitudes of people living in this area. We conducted face-to-face surveys with 1,011 respondents of different social and demographic strata and seven experts in Bangladesh. Using these data, we analyze how closely people's perceptions align with climate data, and whether six seasons are becoming four seasons. Finally, we characterize the determinants of people's cooperative attitudes toward ood controls by examining their willingness to pay (WTP).We obtain the following principal results. First, most people correctly perceive the nature of climate variables. Moreover, people's perceptions and our statistical analysis of climate are identical in indicating that the annual calendar is transitioning to four seasons. Second, people who correctly perceive climatic changes tend to express a higher WTP than those who do not. Overall, these ndings suggest that a change in seasonal climatic patterns is occurring in the area. Informational and educational efforts related to accurate climate perceptions are keys to increasing cooperation into managing climatic change and related disasters.departmental bulletin pape
Causes of energy shortage in Pakistan: An empirical evidence
Get PDFWe address the causes of electricity shortage in Pakistan by examining data over the 7 period 1971-2010 with time series analysis. The novelty lies in characterizing energy shortage via an index comprising the demands of electricity, gas and oil as well as via the information of public electricity supply. In particular, this index enables a simple empirical approach where energy shortage cannot be directly measured as data. Our main findings are as follows: first, end-consumers adjust their energy demand to the prices only in long run. Second, under-utilization of installed power generation capacity encourages fossil fuel consumption for private electricity. Third, uninterrupted electricity supply could be attained through regulating private electricity generation. Fourth, the relative demand for electricity increases and then decreases with real income in relation to gas and oil. Overall, our investigation implies that price adjustments tactics adopted by the government are not effective policies to deal with power shortage if oriented to short-run impacts. Rather, the government should focus on improving utilization rate of installed power plants and re-channeling the use of oil and gas for public electricity generation. Otherwise, energy shortage shall be worsened with economic growth in Pakistan.departmental bulletin pape
How Do Income and Bequest Taxes Affect Income Inequality? The Role of Parental Transfers
Get PDFThis paper studies how income and bequest taxes affect income inequality. We firstly explore this relationship empirically using a panel of 20 OECD countries from 1980 to 2008. The data shows that an increase of income taxation tends to strengthen income inequality, while the inequality effect of bequest taxation is ambiguous. In order to explain these findings, we develop an overlapping generation model with inter-generational transfers. Altruistic parents face the joint decision of making educational investment and leaving financial bequests. A change in tax structure will affect both asset allocation decision and wealth transmission, which in turn governs the dynamics of human capital accumulation and determines the net tax effects on equilibrium income distribution. We show these tax effects on income inequality analytically, and examine aggregate effects with numerical experiments. We find that the predictions of our model are consistent with data patterns.departmental bulletin pape
Structural Changes and Interregional Income Inequality in the Philippines, 1975-2009
Get PDFThe Philippines has undergone gradual but substantial changes in industrial structure over the past few decades, and these have been associated with the changes in the geographical distribution of economic activity. This study analyzes changes in the determinants of regional income inequality in the Philippines associated with these structural changes from 1975 to 2009. This is accomplished by using the bi-dimensional decomposition method. The reduction of the disparity between the National Capital Region (NCR) and therest of Luzon is essential to decreasing Luzon’s high within-region inequality and overall interregional inequality. But this is not easy to accomplish, since services sectors have enjoyed agglomeration economies that NCR has nurtured under economic liberalization and globalization. Decentralization has been one way to ameliorate the disparity, but its effects are ambiguous. Another option would be to relocate some manufacturing activities to areas outside NCR where they could enjoy localization economies.departmental bulletin pape
Urbanization and Expenditure Inequality in Indonesia: Testing the Kuznets Hypothesis with Provincial Panel Data
Get PDFFocusing on Indonesia, this study analyzes the relationship between inequality and the process of urbanization. It performs a panel data regression analysis to test the Kuznets inverted-U hypothesis for urbanization based on a provincial panel data set of 33 provinces over the period 2000-2009, constructed by using the core National Socio-economic Survey (core Susenas). Our results support the Kuznets inverted-U hypothesis, whether the Gini coefficient or the Theil indices are used as a measure of inequality. According to our estimates, expenditure inequality would reach the peak at an urbanization rate of around 46-50%. Since the 2010 urbanization rate is 50%, this indicates that expenditureinequality has already attained the peak value. Thus, further urbanization would decrease expenditure inequality, but all other things being equal.departmental bulletin pape
Estimating a Search and Matching Model of the Ag-gregate Labor Market in Japan
Get PDFThis paper studies how well a simple search and matching model can describe aggregate Japanese labor market dynamics in a full information setting. We develop a discrete-time search and matching model with a convex vacancy posting cost and three shocks: productivity, separation, and mark-up shocks. We use the model as a data-generating process for our empirical analysis and estimate it by using Bayesian methods. The model is successful in replicating the behavior of unemployment and vacancies in Japan. However, we also find that the success of the model relies on shock processes that are not empirically plausible.departmental bulletin pape
GENDER, MIDDLE MANAGER MANAGEMENT, AND PERFORMANCE: EVIDENCE FROM INDONESIAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Get PDFBy applying Moore (1995) concept of distinctive managerial functions - managing upward, downward, and outward -, this study attempts to understand the impacts of middle-level management functions on organizational performance; and tries to investigate gender impacts on the middle-level management and performance linkages. This study employs Indonesian Family Life Survey 4 (IFLS4) crosssectional data and applies Weighted Least Squares (WLS) method to analyze some hypotheses constructed. The results indicate the significant impacts of managing downward negatively and managing outward positively on organization performance. Meanwhile, managing upward does not give the significant impact on organization performance. On the other hand, gendered managing outward effects on organization performance are strongly positive significant for female managers and strongly negative significant for males. For both male and female managers, managing downward gives significant positive impacts on organization performance, but males’effect is much greater than females. Lastly, the gendered managing upward effect is not significant related with organization performance. Therefore, it can be concluded that public managers need to give more efforts on managing outward by creating more networking to increase the organization performance. In contrast, the principals may need to modify their strategy to manage their subordinates because current managing downward strategy gives negative impacts on the organization performance.departmental bulletin pape
The Roles of Location and Education in the Distribution of Economic Well-being in Indonesia: Hierarchical and Non-hierarchical Inequality Decomposition Analyses
Get PDFThis paper analyzes the roles of location (rural and urban sectors) and education in the distribution of economic well-being in Indonesia by employing the hierarchical and non-hierarchical decomposition methods of the Theil indices. This is done by using household expenditure data from the national socio-economic survey (Susenas) in 2008. It shows that there are large expenditure disparities across education levels but that these are more pronounced in the urban sector than the rural sector. When there are differences in educational structure between the rural and urban sectors, the hierarchical decomposition method appears to offer a better approach than the non-hierarchical method.departmental bulletin pape
UNDERSTANDING PAY-FOR-PERFORMANCE INSTATE GOVERNMENTS: A Diffusion Theory Approach
Get PDFSince the New Public Management is emphasized, the practices of the business sector have been introduced to the public sector without careful assessment. One of the examples is the adoption of pay-for-performance across state governments. Although theories of pay-for-performance may be compelling, scholars have found failures of payfor-performance in the public sector. This study applies a diffusion theory to understand why state governments have adopted pay-for-performance although its effectiveness was not confirmed. Findings show that state governments tend to adopt pay-for-performance as their neighboring states have previously adopted it, but the marginal probability of adoption decreases as more neighbors have adopted pay-for-performance.departmental bulletin pape